Indoor Mask Mandate Dropped

COLLEGE DROPS INDOOR MASK MANDATE MARCH 4 IN ACCORDANCE WITH TOMPKINS COUNTY GUIDANCE

BY LORIEN TYNE

Starting March 4, Ithaca College dropped its campuswide mask mandate. After the change went into effect, the college no longer required face masks to be worn within any indoor locations, unless clearly stated otherwise, regardless of individual vaccination status.

In a March 1 email to the campus community, Samm Swarts, director of emergency preparedness and response, announced the policy change, citing the Tompkins County Health Department’s (TCHD) Feb. 28 suspension of the mask advisory in the community.

Additionally, the college elected to allow faculty members to decide what the mask policies will be for their classrooms. The college asked these faculty members to inform students of what will be expected of them in their classrooms as soon as possible.

The Ithaca City School District also suspended its mandate around the same time. After the mandate was dropped, masks were no longer required indoors, outdoors or on school buses. Between Feb. 24 and March 2, the county reported fewer than 200 new cases for every 100,000 people and less than 10% of hospital beds in the county is occupied by patients with COVID-19.

While the college’s library is following guidance to drop the mask mandate, the Center for LGBT Education, Outreach and Services elected to continue requiring masks inside its facilities. The announcement said that masks will still be required in all health care settings, including campus locations like the Emerson Hall, Hammond Health Center and health professions clinics.

Swarts also said in the announcement that if COVID-19 case numbers were to rise dramatically and if the rate of transmission at the college were to increase, the campus would revert back to its campuswide indoor mask mandate regardless of guidance from TCHD.

“While this new guidance is encouraging and welcomed news for many, I would like to recognize that this update might also spur some anxiety as well,” the email stated. “This change will once again require us to recalibrate as a campus community and be supportive of differing tolerance for the risks associated with COVID-19.”

As of now, Cornell University has not dropped its mask mandate, but other colleges in the United States are. According to Inside Higher Ed, public colleges are following states like California, Connecticut, Delaware, Nevada, New Jersey, New York and Oregon that are changing mask mandates.

Junior Cali Trainor said that when she heard that the college’s mask mandate would be dropped, she felt anxious and angry.

“I myself am immunocompromised,” Trainor said. “I am just concerned that the campus is not going to be doing anything to protect other immunocompromised and at-risk people like myself. A lot of the reason I felt comfortable coming on campus this semester was knowing that almost everyone has to be vaccinated.” Trainor said now that the mandate has been dropped, she will have to make more diffcult decisions regarding her health. “It’s putting us [students] in a really uncomfortable situation because now I have to decide between my health and well-being and my grades potentially,” Trainor said. In response to student and faculty concerns, Swarts said via email that the college has followed the guidance of TCHD and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) when it comes to masking since the beginning of the pandemic. He said the college will continue to align with the county’s decisions. “I have heard from many students about their discomfort with the new masking guidance on campus,” Swarts said. “I am listening to these concerns and will relay them back to the Senior Leadership Team for further conversation.”

The Ithaca College COVID-19 risk level has been at “Green: Lower Risk” since Feb. 4. As of March 2, there are 20 active student COVID-19 cases and fve active employee cases, according to the COVID-19 dashboard. There are 13 rooms being utilized to quarantine in Emerson for students who tested positive.

Other members of the campus community like junior Noah Schwartz are excited to see changes that show the world is beginning to recover from COVID-19. Schwartz said he has been extremely vigilant with COVID-19 safety the past two years, but he feels that if the county is saying masks are no longer necessary then it is time to end the mandate on campus.

“I’m just happy that we’re going to move past it and we can just have our open faces again, and hopefully that kind of brings some normalcy back to the campus,” Schwartz said. “I think we can take these steps and then backtrack if we need to, but I’m hoping this is the start of something positive pushing us forward.”

When the TCHD announced that it would drop its mask advisory, it attributed the county’s drop in positive COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations — bringing the county into the “Low” category for COVID-19 risk under the CDC measuring framework.

In a statement, Frank Kruppa, Tompkins County public health director, said to stay vigilant with

Anna McCracken/The Ithacan